


those who go out early

by thisstableground



Series: less than ninety degrees [1]
Category: Do No Harm (TV)
Genre: (he's getting there), Gen, Let Ruben Be Happy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Series is Usnavi/Ruben/Vanessa, but this installment is gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 09:06:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10738539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: Ruben wants a new start, a new city, and some early-morning coffee. Usnavi wants people to stop tagging his goddamn wall.[aka a "how they met" prequel to "your body is a triangle"][November 2016 - January 2017]





	those who go out early

**Author's Note:**

> [a/n: i'm sure the only people reading this are the ones who come over from my tumblr anyway so HERE LOOK IM MAKING THIS RIDICULOUS CROSSOVER AN ACTUAL VERSE.
> 
> assume that all characters are at different points in their 20s. the never-answered-in-canon question of 'the fuck happened to ruben in jamaica' is lifted from the first chapter of _maps_ but events diverge after that so you don't need to have read it. short answer: knife, but at least he didn't die.]
> 
> content warning: deals with PTSD recovery and past abuse/violence (though not in great detail). perhaps one day i will write something ruben-centric where he doesn't have at least one panic attack but he's working through a lot of stuff, these things take time.]

Ruben goes back to Independence Memorial just once, almost nine months after the last time he saw it. It feels longer. Jason’s not around, he's in the secure psych unit he got sent to after the trial, and Ian's been non-existent since April. Even with that small comfort, Ruben doesn’t particularly want to be here, but he spent the main part of five years at IMH. There are people who have been wanting to see him now that he’s back. He figures at the very least it might feel more like closure than his abrupt cut-and-run to the airport.  
  
He’s not under any illusions about his ex-colleagues missing him, as such - he got along well with all of them, but only as co-workers. They didn’t hang out together or swap secrets or whatever it is friends do (the only person he saw outside of work regularly was Jason, the only person whose secrets he knew was Jason). They were genuinely glad to hear that he was safe, yes, but he knows that they’re also curious, morbidly, about the details. Everyone's seen the news coverage, they all must have speculated, and none of them are insensitive enough to actually ask. It’s obvious that they’re hoping he’ll tell them, which he absolutely will not.  
  
“We all thought you died,” they keep saying.

_I’m pretty sure I did_ , he thinks. A whole different Ruben got back on the plane home than the one who left, and he’d already been losing himself for too long even before that. Most of his adult life took place in this lab and it doesn’t feel familiar to him at all any more. The old patterns of movement ingrained from years of walking round this room don’t resurface, he doesn’t pick up the rhythm of the clockwork smalltalk that’s cycling round the lab even though it’s been the same every day since he started here. He barely recognises the faces of people who he’d sometimes spend twelve hours a day working side-by-side with.

Maybe they feel the same about him. They look at him like they’re trying to find something that’s not there any more.

These are the things that linger from his pre-Jamaica days:

The lab door swings open and he tenses, ready to hear  _Ruben, I need something_  even though he’s got nothing left to give.  


As he goes to leave he braces for someone to shove him against the glass before he has time to escape.

He stands in the elevator and his breath catches at every floor it stops on, waiting to be pinned against the wall by whoever enters.

Even though Jason is gone, Ruben’s done with this place for good. He doesn’t want to sit up all night in a lab trying to make a breakthrough with the ghosts of Jason and Ian hovering at his back like a cartoon: angel on one shoulder, devil on the other, only turns out both of them are pretty fucked in the morals department.

He wants to get the hell out of this building as fast as possible and go hide in his childhood bedroom at his mom’s house, which is where he’s staying since he has no apartment any more. Turns out landlords don’t sit around on your contract just in case you come back from the dead.

  
***

The best thing about living at home is being met with the open arms of his mom or Paola or Mercedes around him almost as soon as he comes through the door. There’s a lot he’s had to give up in terms of the easy affections of family. Casual shoulder punches or a hand ruffling his hair as someone passes behind where he’s sitting aren’t an option any more. They try to make up the deficit with hugs - carefully, never unexpectedly (not after the first time) but frequent nonetheless. He soaks it up like sunshine on leaves. Basic human needs like physical affection were always something he’d neglect when he was busy, and he was always busy when he was working. But that disconnect was different during his fake-death, when he didn't have any choice about it, or when the choice was between completely alone and _fuck it hurts it_ ** _hurts_ —**

Well, anyway, that was then. This is now, and now, it’s good to see his family again. It’s good to not be alone.

It’s not so good that every time he sits down to dinner, all he hears is Ian across the table, fake charm and compliments about his mother's cooking. It’s not so good when he stands to leave and imagines a hand on his shoulder, automatically wants to turn frightened eyes to his mom, to hope she understands without him saying that _I don’t want to have a night out with this man, mom, I don’t know if I’ll ever come back from it_ , only for her to insist that he needs to go out and meet people.

It’s not good when he can’t even go buy a coffee without expecting to bump into Jason, even though that's literally impossible. It's still all he thinks about whenever he leaves the house: what if Jason's somehow there, what if he finds him? Ruben doesn't want to hear what Jason might have to say. 

How is he supposed to find closure when everything around here is poking old wounds? He doesn’t need to revisit the past, he needs to start over.

***

Ruben’s not buying mansions any time soon, but he’s got a decent amount of savings, he’s got something left over from that pink backpack of ill-gotten drug money that he tries not to think too hard about. IMH gave him a severance package and a pretty hefty out-of-court settlement: here’s your cash, Dr Marcado, we will never speak about the time we suspended you after Dr Cole beat the shit out of you without even asking if you needed some help and then you nearly got killed.  
  
He wouldn’t have actually accepted help, of course. Stupid, loyal, gullible past-Ruben wouldn’t have betrayed Jason, who he thought was his fucking friend for God only knows what reason. But new, tired, post-therapy Ruben wonders why nobody thought to question Jason’s relative place of authority in their whole messed up little deal. Or, you know, the fact that he tried to strangle Ruben at work in front of a witness. It doesn’t matter how he would’ve reacted or what his reasons were, they should at least have asked.

But he’s not got the energy to make a fuss about it, and they gave him enough money to have options. Though he doesn’t think he can face another lab just yet, he’s got a PhD, he got some teaching experience back in college. It doesn't matter where all of this takes him, as long as it takes him far, far away from Philadelphia.

Where it takes him is: a position at a community college in Mahattan. It doesn’t pay great but it pays. It doesn’t start until summer school classes next year, but he itches to leave now so he starts looking for somewhere to rent.

Where it takes him is: a neighborhood called Washington Heights, the closest place he can find where he won't burn through his savings in a month, subletting a small, cheap apartment from the current tenant who is leaving the country to travel indefinitely. Twelve months, at least, maybe longer, and Ruben can move in at the very start of January. New year, new life.  


“Are you sure?” his mom has asked a thousand times.

About Washington Heights and the new job and being - oh, god, being on his own again, living by himself, struggling to recall how it feels to have his sister’s arm around him or his mom’s hand stroking his hair while being thrown into sporadic sensory replays of the dialysis needle or Ian's hands or the knife? Is he sure about that? Fuck, no.

Is he sure about leaving Philadelphia? He’s never been more certain of anything in his life. That’s good enough for him.

His mom watches him sadly as he checks over the contents of his single suitcase one last time, ready and packed in the hallway. The suitcase is one of hers: his own was lost first to Unclaimed Baggage at Montego Bay Airport and then to the custody of police evidence.  
  
(Most of his belongings are gone for good now. When the investigation into his disappearance was stamped death in absentia and closed, his mother held onto only the hard copies of his research - somewhere deep in there are several thick, heavy folders of information on Blackout, which still makes his stomach turn. Ruben had forgotten about it, until the plane. What if Ian had found out? - as well as a small box of his other things. She'd donated or sold all the rest.  
  
“We couldn’t keep it all, cariño, we didn’t have space for so much of it. And I kept finding myself in here with it all looking like you’d be home any day,” she had said, on his first night back when he realised his old room was plain and empty. “We kept it all while they were looking for you but then they told us you were dead...I just kept opening drawers full of clothes, thinking about how you’d never be here to wear them again. It was too much. But we weren’t trying to forget you, you mustn’t think we were.”  
  
“No llores, Mamá, por favor, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he’d soothed, as she sobbed guiltily into his shoulder. She’d got rid of his furniture, his kitchenware, things that served a function when he was there to use them. But she’d held onto the PR flag from his wall, his stacks of old notebooks going all the way back to high school, a few of his favorite sweaters. The plants that he once carefully tended in his apartment had been relocated to various corners of his mom’s house, still growing green and healthy. The photos on her wall still showed his smile at all different ages, his diplomas and certificates and old, praise-filled school reports were still in the drawer alongside those belonging to his sisters. How would he think she was trying to forget him, when she’d kept everything about him that was Ruben?)

“Are you sure you want to-“

“Ma.”

“Lo siento, lo siento, I know. It’s just…we only just got you back. Isn’t there anything we could do that would make you stay here?” she asks, tears in her eyes.

_You can’t **make**  me do anything!_ something defensive in him snaps instinctively, and he immediately feels awful even though he didn’t say it aloud.  _She’s not trying to force you to do anything. The last time you left you disappeared. She’s just worried. Calm down, breathe, it’s fine._

“I have to go,” he says, kissing her cheek, and he leaves before he changes his mind.

***

He changes his mind at least seven times on the way anyway, thinking in circles with his head leaned against the window of the bus. The vibrations chatter his teeth and judder all down his body as he watches the road underneath speed by.   
  
He changes his mind again three more times on the A-train, warily scanning the faces of everyone around him, over and over and over.

_ You’re not gonna see him. That’s the whole reason you came here. This whole thing is pointless if you’re still gonna be paranoid. Maybe you should’ve just stayed at Ma’s. There’s probably gonna be a bus back - _

It keeps going, and he hasn’t come any closer to settled by the time he’s stood on an escalator at 181st, the small square of daylight at the top getting bigger as he goes up, up, up towards his brand new life.

Oh, fuck.

I can’t do this! he yells at himself, and then it’s kind of too late for that, idiot.

He can do this. He has to do this.

Stand tall.

Stay calm.

Just breathe.

***

The only person he meets on the first day is the woman he's subletting from, who tosses him the keys and runs through a quick explanation of how to use the shower, the stove and so on before dashing off to wherever it is she’s spending the next part of her life.  


Ruben eats one of the granola bars he packed while he runs his fingers over a cigarette burn on the seat of the sofa, feeling the sharp edges of the tiny circle where the cheap synthetic fabric melted into itself and hardened, and tells himself he’ll explore the neighborhood tomorrow.

On the second day he wakes up stupidly early, has a shower that he can’t get to even nearly the right temperature, and is dressed and ready to leave the house by 6am. It’s a good time to do it: nobody awake to crowd him, nobody awake to look at him too closely. He still feels overexposed sometimes, and being in a new place only emphasises it, so he should go out while it’s quiet.  


After ten solid minutes of holding the door handle, trying to surprise himself into opening it by mentally yelling “now!” at random intervals, he gives up on leaving the apartmnt. He doesn’t meet anyone today, and instead spends it doing a kind of agoraphobic archaelogical investigation of the apartment, looking into hidden closets and corners for artefacts to see if he can piece together an image of the last tenant.  
  
The place has been mostly cleared of everything except the old, well-used furniture, but there are other hints here and there. A shower curtain with a print of little smiling sunshines, a few chipped coffee mugs in bright block colours, a book fallen behind a set of shelves. It’s poetry. The pages on the left hand side are all in Spanish, their English translations on the right.  
  
Since he’s got nothing else to do, he reads it. He has five granola bars left and eats four of them while he tries to figure out what's actually being said. Whoever owned the book before has underlined certain passages in pencil, always on the Spanish pages. The lines must’ve meant something important to them: Ruben’s fluent in both languages and doesn’t understand much from either version. Poetry was never his thing.  
  
God, he’s bored.  
  
***  
  
On his third day in Washington Heights, he eats his last granola bar at quarter past six in the morning while lying in bed. He’s been awake for all of ten minutes and he’s already pre-emptively bored at the idea of spending another day wandering around an empty apartment. Going back to sleep just for something to do is an option, and since it’s been two days since he’s had any caffeine, he’s tired enough that he could probably do it despite going to bed relatively early.

That’s definitely an unhealthy coping mechanism. Also, he’s hungry. Also, coffee.  
  
It’s time to go outside.

Fuck.

Okay, this is fine, he can manage this. He has gone outside to a store before a million times. Nobody knows him here. Nobody will be looking for him, nobody will be looking at him. There’s a bodega a few buildings down, he passed it when he was moving in, it’ll probably be open by now.

Before he locks his apartment door he instinctively checks the hallway for figures that could be Ian or Jason. He hates himself a little bit for being so irrational, then he hates himself a bit more for hating himself because he knows he has every right to be irrational, then he forcibly reminds himself in his therapist’s voice that His Fears Are Valid and He Is Trying His Best and good fucking god it’s too early for this.  
  
Think of coffee, think of anything else, think of the imminent creeping sunrise glinting on windows and staining pink the white parts of the flags all around. Think of one of the pencil-marked lines from the poetry book yesterday,  _la aurora de Nueva York gime por las inmensas escalera_. Hanging from the fire escapes there’s the colours of America-Puerto-Rico-Dominican-Republic-Cuba-Mexico-Chile. Ruben counts them off in Spanish because it seems appropriate and breathes in time with the numbers, uno-dos-tres-respira.

He’s doing well. He’s nearly there. He’s doing w-

“HEY! YOU!”

\- fuck fuck fuck fuck no he’s not doing well at all. At the sound of the shout a few feet in front of him, Ruben brings his hands up to his head protectively, remembers in Jason’s house fumbling with the door Ian’s footsteps right behind him glass smashing right by his head -  there’s a metal clatter of something being dropped and footsteps running away. His feet are frozen and his breath comes quick while his brain is yelling run run run and the voice from before is yelling-

“You little punk, I told you to - oh, shit, hey, are you okay, man?” the voice turns gentle at the end.

Ruben’s partly phasing between a million different places Jason’s house the plane the hospital basement his lab  **Jamaica** \- but the other half of him is very distinctly aware that he’s actually just curled in on himself outside a bodega in Washington Heights, while someone stands nearby apparently trying to nervously monologue him out of an imminent panic attack.

“-didn’t mean to scare you or anything, didn’t even see you actually, you’re okay, breathe, I was yelling at that little pendejo tagging my wall, I’m sorry please just breathe uno-dos-tres-respira nice and slow-“  
  
Whoever it is sounds like he’s freaking out almost as much as Ruben is. His voice gets progressively higher towards the end of his run-on sentence like he’s running out of air.

“You talking to me or yourself?” Ruben manages through shuddered breathing, almost laughing.

“Oh, thank fuck, I thought I might’ve broken you,” says the guy, relieved. “Are you okay, can you breathe? You want me to count with you? One, two, three, four, breathe - that’s better, you’re doing great - uno, dos, hey, you’re new around here, aren’t you? I haven’t seen you before. My name is Usnavi, by the way.”

Ruben’s still shaky and his stomach is still twisting, but underneath that there’s something in him warming instantly to Usnavi who, though he is clearly trying very hard to help, is so incredibly bad at being a steady, calming presence that it sort of circles all the way back round and actually makes Ruben feel better. He stands up straighter and takes in Usnavi properly -worriedly fidgeting with his bright red shirt, peeking out from under a flat cap. Big dark tired eyes and a scruffy beard, just like Ruben. It makes him seem safe, almost familiar.

“I’ve been here a few days,” Ruben says, belatedly answering the question. “Not been out til now, though, you won’t have seen me. And Ruben, I’m Ruben.”

Usnavi winces. “Damn. Hell of a first impression, right? Well, Ruben, nice to meet you, welcome to the neighborhood, please don't let my dumb yelling ass drag it down in your estimations. It’s a great place, the best place. I really am sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It happens sometimes.”   
  
It happens way too often, but he doesn’t need to tell Usnavi that, this has already been a pretty intense introduction. Talk about bad first impressions: hyperventilating at a complete stranger in the middle of a street at dawn is probably up there.

“Hm,” Usnavi looks at Ruben with his head tilted one way, and then the other, like he’s trying to figure something out. “Okay, but I’m still sorry. Let me make it up to you: coffee’s on the house.”

“Oh, you don’t have to -“

“No arguments,” says Usnavi cheerfully, turning to pull up the brightly-painted grate over the window and fiddle the key in the lock. “Call it a housewarming gift. You’re not officially part of the barrio til you’ve had café the De la Vega way.”

**Author's Note:**

> [a/n: the title and the line of poetry Ruben remembers are both from La Aurora by Federico García Lorca:  
>  _dawn in New York groans_  
>  _on enormous fire escapes_  
>  is the translation from my edition of the Poet In New York anthology: directly _las inmensas escaleras_ would be 'the immense stairs', but poetry translation is a tricky thing, and you can see why i went with the version i did. the anthology itself actually has very different and far less optimistic view on moving to NYC. perhaps for the best that Ruben didn't particularly get it.
> 
> the graffiti kid is not, in fact, Pete, since this is a few years after ITH. Usnavi's just got a really appealing wall. the mural on the grate is safe, at least.
> 
> come watch me have constant screaming feelings about ruben living in the heights at [ thisstableground](https://thisstableground.tumblr.com/) on tumblr]


End file.
